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30 November 2008 Dear Sponsors, Our recent trip to Haiti (October 1 – October 15) was a great success although we visited Haiti during a continued time of great hardship for the Haitian people. The food shortage they were experiencing during our March/April visit has grown worse due to the damages caused by 4 hurricanes in the month of September. Food prices are still extremely high and there is still a great need for more foreign aid in the country to help feed the people. If you would like to help your sponsored child’s family, the best way to help them at this time is to send them an extra financial gift. If this is something you would like to do, please contact us. Even with these difficulties, we were able to process 686 children on this trip – which was another record-breaking amount of work! It’s even more note-worthy when you take into account the fact that the children were still out of school when we first arrived. (Due to the storm damages President Preval had closed all the schools in the country from September 8 – October 6.) We also visited two new schools that Pastor Noel had asked us to visit. We decided to add the children from one of those two schools - the Baptist school in Trou du Nord. We had 10 team members from Maine, New Hampshire, Utah and California, many of whom had never met in person until making this trip. We hope to have photos from this trip posted to the “trip photos” page on the web site soon. We also have photos of MANY children waiting for a sponsor on the “child in need” page of our web site. Please help us spread the word about these waiting children. Sponsoring a child as a gift for someone during the holiday season is always a great idea. We also have a presentation DVD and brochures for anyone who would like to do a presentation in their area or host a “Sponsorship Party” in their home. Please let us know if you are interested in doing any of these things and we will send you the necessary items. On this trip we updated the following schools – the Center of Protection and the Secondary School in Terrier Rouge, Danda, Paulette and Phaeton (as well as adding 60 children from the town of Trou du Nord). If your child was absent from school during their regularly scheduled updating visit, they will automatically be put on the list of children to be updated during our next visit to Haiti and we will do the best we can to see them then, even if their school is not due to be updated at that time. Next spring we plan to update the following schools – the Primary School in Terrier Rouge, Ouvray, Juchereau and Roche Platte. Another piece of exciting news I have to share is that a piece of land has been purchased in Terrier Rouge and plans are underway to construct a home that will be for the children of Kay Li as well as for a small number of elderly people who need someone to care for them. This elderly program will be run as a program of His Hands but it will be overseen by a friend of ours, Julienne Begin, who traveled to Haiti with us last spring. Julienne has a heart for the elderly and is currently in Haiti to start the process of getting information on the people Pastor Noel chooses to reside in the home. Until the new facility can be built, a house will be rented for the elderly and they will be living there until the new building is ready for inhabitants. We will be adding a page about the elderly program to our website as soon as the details of the program can be worked out. If you are interested in the program and would like to contact Julienne about it, her e-mail address is julienne@hishandsforhaiti.org. Our next trip to Haiti is scheduled for February of 2008. As of this writing, we have many people who have expressed an interest in being a part of this team which we hope will have a combined sponsorship/construction emphasis. We hope to begin working on the new home for the children and the elderly as well as construction of a small concrete block building to replace the shelter in Ouvray which was destroyed during the hurricanes. Funds will be needed to begin these projects and if you would like to help, please let us know. We will soon have the His Hands for Africa website up and running but for now please check out the Africa page on the His Hands for Haiti web site. The news coming out of the Congo in recent days is horrifying and we are all very concerned about this situation as we have many children in our program who are living in the town of Goma, which is at the center of the recent hostilities. These children are in desperate need of sponsors to help pay their school fees. The fee for the sponsorship of primary school children in Goma is just $10/month. Please let us know if you or anyone else would be interested in sponsoring one of these children. We covet your prayers for the children and their families as well as for Pastor Bamo as he seeks ways to help them in this terribly difficult time. We greatly appreciate your interest in the needs of the children of Haiti. We are excited about the ways God is using us to help the children of Haiti, as well as the children of the Great Lakes region of Africa, as we move ahead in this ministry. Thank you so much for your part in this ministry and thank you for your continued prayer and support. For Him and for the children, Jamie Charles Child Sponsorship Coordinator |
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